Whoever said China’s government wasn’t innovating clearly hasn’t been to the small town of Baishun in the southern province of Guangdong.

Leaders of Baishun, population around 12,600, were faced with a quandary recently: How to satisfy demands by higher Communist Party authorities that official banquet costs be trimmed and other expenses economized while keeping up appearances for visiting officials and other guests?

The town’s solution: brew its own rice wine.

“It’s not just cutting costs, but also healthier,” one local official was quoted as saying this week in the state-run Southern Rural Daily.

It remains almost unthinkable in China to throw a dinner for government or business leaders without copious amounts of alcohol, typically the head-splitting sorghum-based firewater known as baijiu. Yet local leaders in particular are under pressure to cut the appearance of official decadence. Perceived extravagance by the party along with corruption have ranked among the deepest sources of discontent among ordinary Chinese ahead of a sensitive once-a-decade leadership transition scheduled to begin Nov. 8.

Other cities have moved previously to curtail consumption of high-end liquors and food delicacies. In July, for example, the eastern city of Wenzhou banned the serving of delicacies such as shark’s fin and high-end liquor at official banquets. Few places, however, have acted as drastically as the iron-livered officials of Baishun.

The article doesn’t reveal the town’s specific rice wine recipe, but home brewers elsewhere typically describe processes that allow a rice and yeast mixture to ferment for an extended period of time.

The Baishun official quoted this week said the town consumes around 100 jin of alcohol a month during official gatherings. A jin is a traditional Chinese measure, equal to about half a liter.
“When leaders come we drink close to 20 jin,” the Baishun official said. “When village and town cadres come, we can’t not drink.”

The official, who wasn’t named, offered some rough calculations, saying after buying rice, firewood and paying other costs, Baishun’s rice wine, or mijiu, works out to around 5 yuan ($.80) per jin. Average bottles of baijiu, a much stronger distilled alcohol that is often aged for several years, run several hundred yuan and commonly top 1,000 yuan.

That adds up in a town where per capita income was only around $830 a year in 2010. The Baishun official declined to say how money saved from local-brewing program would be used. For the sake of local officials now swilling moonshine to demonstrate solidarity with the people, here’s hoping at least some of the savings goes to pay for aspirin.